Project Kal El
by Razzmatazz Lady
Summary: This is an AU story where the Kents didn't find Kal-El the fateful day of the meteor shower. Instead,he is discovered by a lab with their own motives. Will he still become a hero, or live as something quite differently?
1. Genesis

Project Kal-El

1. Genesis

_(In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth…)_

The day had been uneventful so far. Smallville was calm. Metropolis was as calm as a bustling city could be. Even Firestorm Labs, only a few miles outside the town, was calm.

"Where's the paperwork on Project Annihilator?" Dr. Lawrence Hamilton bellowed, speaking to no one in particular. He had to catch up on his files and today seemed like an appropriate day to do so.

"I have it here, sir," replied some nameless worker submissively. He took it from the worker and turned to get to the elevator. He wasn't as fit as he once was and could no longer stand to climb up five flights of stairs to get to his office.

Three other people were in the elevator: Colonel Rick Flag Sr., Amanda Waller, and Dr. Ambrose Wolf.

The elevator began its ascent upward.

_(And the earth was without form, and void…)_

Jonathon and Martha Kent were driving to the market for the beginning of a long day. They both felt the tension from the day before, when their doctor had concluded that they would never have children. Both were silent, but would give one another reassuring smiles every few minutes.

_(And darkness was upon the face of the deep…)_

Lionel Luthor and his son, Alexander, were in Smallville, by chance of business. While his father spoke with more important people, Lex wandered into a cornfield. He was instantly astonished by how much darker it was when one is surrounded by tall cornstalks.

_(And God said, 'Let there be light' and there was light.)_

The calm was split by a bright light in the sky.

Jonathon stopped the truck and looked up at the sky. There was a giant light, but something odd was happening to it…he couldn't figure out what it was until Martha exclaimed, "There's more than one!" He realized the bright beam was indeed hundreds of lights, which as they grew closer to Earth, were slowly becoming more distinct…

"Lex! Lex, where are you?" Lex could hear his father's voice, but he had wandered too far. As the blazing meteors began to hit the ground, he turned every direction, but could not see the way out. "Dad, help me!" he yelled desperately.

Hamilton had just asked the young intern Amanda Waller how things were at Cadmus when she gasped and pointed out the window of the elevator. He turned and cried out. Green-tinted meteors were smashing into the ground and anything in their way.

"What's going on?" Flag exclaimed. "Are those meteors?"

"We need to get out of-" Waller was interrupted by a loud crash as a meteor flew straight threw the wall across the top of the elevator. She and Hamilton screamed as the elevator swung dangerously back and forth. Wolf lurched forward and jammed his hand into the emergency open button. The doors slid open with a creak. There were only a couple of feet to squeeze through onto the next floor.

Hamilton let out a groan and the others instantly saw the other reason he had screamed. A small meteor has burst through the window and pierced the top of his leg. Blood seeped through his khakis as he slumped to the floor, whimpering.

"We need to get out of here before it falls," Flag said. Wolf immediately went to the wall and began to push himself up. Flag and Waller each gave a hand in helping him through.

The elevator creaked and leaned back a bit more. Waller gave a small shriek.

"Come on, Miss Waller," Flag prodded. She planted her hands on the next floor. Flag lifted her legs while Wolf pulled her arms. Flag turned back to Hamilton, not even flinching as the elevator dropped a foot more.

Hamilton shook his head. "Get yourself up, Colonel. This elevator's going to fall before we can both get up. I'm wounded; you need to help yourself."

"Sorry, sir. That's against policy." Flag heaved Hamilton over his shoulder and pushed him up to Waller and Wolf. They tugged his arms and he cried out in pain from his leg. The elevator creaked and they pulled Hamilton the rest of the way though.

Then the elevator dropped.

Flag didn't scream, or even gasp. He just closed his eyes and hoped his son would understand. He hoped Rick Jr. would understand that sacrificing oneself was an honor. It was the noblest thing one could do. As he fell to his death and the elevator crashed against the bottom of the shaft, he just closed his eyes. He had led a tiring life.

The others stared down in shock. Soon, though, Wolf strode away.

"Collect meteors!" he yelled to a few field workers. "Check for anything else conspicuous. See if there is anything to be gained from this disaster!"

Hamilton sat in shock until medics put him on a stretcher to be taken to Metropolis Hospital. Waller checked in with Cadmus to assure them that she was all right. They too said to check the immediate area for anything suspicious. She could not help but wonder if someone had known about the shower beforehand…but that was impossible.

_(And God saw the light, that it was good…)_

"Jonathon, are you okay?" Martha asked, looking at her husband. They had crouched in the truck until the unimaginably loud sound of meteors and earth colliding had ceased.

"I'm fine," he replied, wiping a spot of blood from his forehead. A meteor had broken the windshield and glass had flown everywhere. The two climbed out of the truck, examining the destruction. Granted, they were in a fairly deserted section between city and town, but they could tell by the craters that many homes (and probably lives) had been lost.

They walked a ways down the road, looking for others. Finally, they reached a point where on left there was a small hill and another road on the right. They turned to go over the hill, for they could see faint smoke coming over the horizon.

If they had gone over that hill, they would have seen the smoke was coming from a small pod, under which a young boy was hiding. The Kents would have brought him home, raised him as their own. He would have grown up caring, hardworking, and fully aware of human values. This would be a very different story indeed. This would be the story of Superman.

But, as fate would have it, the Kents heard a scream from behind them. They turned and instantly recognized the young Lana Lang. She ran to them, begging for help, yelling that her parents were hurt. They went with her. Her parents were saved, but the life of the boy in the spaceship would be altered forever…

John Peters and Victor Sharpe scanned the area from a government issued convertible, following Wolf's orders.

"Hey, what's that over there? A fire or something?" Peters pointed to the spot the Kents had come so close to finding.

"Well, geez, you don't suppose something's on fire after a meteor shower?" Sharpe asked sarcastically. He scowled. There was nothing to be found in this wreckage.

"But does the smoke look…_green_ to you?" Peters persisted. "I think we should check it out. And get more meteor samples."

Sharpe sighed. "Fine, but we don't need too many more samples. This stuff is going to be embedded in the earth for a long time."

When they had walked over the small hill they saw what we all know they would: a small, silver spacecraft. The two men approached hesitantly and were shocked at what they saw next. A young boy was crouched under the craft, wrapped in a yellow, red, and blue blanket. He stared up at the two men with cold blue eyes.

Sharpe quickly called Firestorm on his radio.

"We found a kid," he told Wolf. "About four or five, but he's right near this…spaceship thing. Should we bring them both in?"

Peters shifted from foot to foot; there was something otherworldly about the boy's deadpan gaze. He wondered if the kid had taken refuge under the spaceship. Maybe his family was dead; maybe that was why he was acting so impassive.

"Wolf says to bring him in," Sharpe said. "Says he could be useful."

"A venomous snake can be useful to make medicine. But you handle him wrong and end up-"

"Oh, come on, Peters! He's just a _kid_."

It did not take long for the people at Firestorm to observe this _kid's _unusual strength and speed…and his defensive nature. Indeed, nine people had to be hospitalized within the first hour of his stay. But Wolf and Hamilton were set on keeping their discovery all to themselves. Hamilton hoped to find life outside of Earth. Wolf hoped to make the ultimate weapon. The boy hoped for nothing at all, for he did not understand what hope was.

_(And he separated the light from the darkness.)_

**Author's Note:** What do you think? Totally confused? For the record, I'm trying a new thing where instead of asterisks or other types of page breaks, I'm using different quotes, lyrics, etc to separate sections of the story. So biblical verses won't be the only thing used. I just named this chapter Genesis because it's the beginning of Kal-El and then thought that the verses from Genesis would be good for page breaks. Please review!


	2. The Evolution

Project Kal-El

2. The Evolution

**Subject:** Unknown

**Age:** Four years

Dr. Hamilton smiled at the young boy staring at him coldly from across the room. It was a gray room, with no windows, just a door. It had taken a good bit of persuasion to get the boy there, but finally he agreed.

"You know," Hamilton said, leaning forward across the hard meal table between them. "You're causing a lot of problems for us. Nine of my best workers have been sent to the hospital because of injuries from your hand."

The boy remained silently pressed against the wall across from Hamilton. He hadn't said a word since arrival.

Hamilton sighed. "We'd like to help you, if you'll let us. I have some of the best scientists in the world studying that spacecraft. As soon as we…_neutralize_ you, they will study you as well. Do you understand?"

The boy remained silent for several more minutes. Finally, Hamilton got up to leave, confident he would not try to escape. He went to open the door.

"I want to go home."

Hamilton turned around slowly. "What did you say?" he said, wondering if he'd heard correctly, if the boy had really spoken.

"I want to go home," he repeated, in a voice so unfeeling, so robotic, one would never imagine it was a four-year-old speaking.

Hamilton beamed as he strode over to the child. "So you do speak? I knew it! I knew if I talked to you long enough, you would."

"I learned."

"You learned? When? Who taught you?"

"Now. Everyone."

Hamilton stared at him in disbelief. "But you can't mean… you couldn't have possibly…you taught yourself the whole English language? Just now, from listening to others?"

The boy nodded.

"What language did you speak before this?" asked Wolf, who had just walked in, but had apparently been listening the whole time. Hamilton gave him a quizzical look, but he shook his head.

The boy looked up at him and showed the first sign of emotion since he'd come.

He frowned and furrowed his brow. "Mother and Father were teaching me before…"

Wolf came forward. "Before what? What happened to them?"

The boy clenched his fists. "I want to go home."

Wolf chuckled. "You are home."

"Let me talk to him for a bit," Hamilton said. He sat down in his original chair, across from the boy.

"Now, if you let us…what is the matter?" Hamilton asked, noticing that the boy had turned toward the wall. He had pressed his forehead against the cold steel and did not seem to be listening.

"I asked what the matter was. Don't let Wolf get to you; he's not very good with children. Did he upset you?"

The boy turned slowly to face Hamilton. His eyes were filled with tears.

"This is not my home."

Hamilton sighed and adjusted his glasses. "I understand you miss your parents…and I promise, if you help us, I'll do everything in my power to find them and reunite you with them. But we can't just let you go. You're a danger to everyone, including yourself. You must understand on some level that you are special. You could lead to revolutionary discoveries, you know. You could change the entire world as we know it."

Wolf reentered. "We need it to translate what's written on the spacecraft," he said, staring intensely at the boy.

The child ended up translating everything on the ship, for somehow he understood the language.

So it was not by his parents, but by this ship, surrounded by strangers, that he learned his name: Kal-El.

**Subject:** Project Kal-El, Sector 313

**Age:** Nine

"You're acting completely irrationally," Hamilton argued heatedly. "You've made Project Doomsday too powerful. If it ever escaped, nothing in the world could stop it."

"So we give it a weakness, a kill-switch. Everything has one," Wolf countered. "Hell, even Kal-El has an Achilles' heel."

"Um, doctors?" piped up a woman who'd just entered.

"What?" they snapped simultaneously.

"There has been an occurrence with Project Kal-El."

"What's happened?" Hamilton asked with concern.

"Well, I was delivering the weights you wanted given to him for his daily exercises, when he…he…"

"He what?" Hamilton asked, still rather irritated.

"He told me what the scientists were doing in the sector next to his."

"And?"

"And he was right."

"I don't see what the problem is," Wolf said exasperatedly.

The woman dug her toes into the floor. "Sir, there are no windows in his room…I think he…saw _through_ the wall."

**Subject:** Project Ace, Sector 301

**Age: **Ten

"Kal, why do you think we're here?" Ace asked Kal-El while they each did individual exercises one day.

He looked up at her. "You are not supposed to call me that."

She wrinkled her nose. "You think because you're three years older, you can tell me what to do like everyone else in this godforsaken?"

Kal-El ignored her and returned to his drills, which consisted of seeing through various materials to answer questions embedded in them.

Ace picked up her pamphlet of mind drills. She ripped out a page, slowly so as to make sure Ka-El noticed. She twisted it and stared intensely at it, her pupils growing larger and smaller rapidly. The next moment, it was no longer a piece of paper; it was a white rose.

Kal-El stared at it. "It is still paper, isn't it? It just looks like a flower."

His voice was hollow and dead; he hadn't slept in days due to constant drilling. Ace decided to put some emotion back into him.

Her pupils grew once again, like ink spreading across her eyes. The lights flickered on and off, faster and faster. Kal-El looked around; the walls began to crack. Black liquid seeped out.

"Stop it," he said, glaring at her. Ace smiled as she made clusters of green crystals emerge from the floor. Kal-El's hands shook until his exercises fell to the floor.

"Stop it!" he yelled, as the papers were carried away in the strong wind that'd picked up in the small cell of a room.

"What's wrong?" Ace asked innocently. "Is the fantastic Project Kal-El scared? You don't like the meteor rocks, do you? What'd they call it…oh yeah. Kryptonite. Does kryptonite scare you, Kal?"

"I could kill you," he whispered, covering his ears as the wind and screams got louder. His hands were bleeding, yet they were not. There was a monsoon above, but that couldn't be. Where was the ceiling? Where was the door? The entire room seemed to be falling apart. Flames and rain and kryptonite and blood were merging before Kal-El's eyes.

"Stop it now or I'll kill you!" he screamed as the illusions invaded his mind. Outside, scientists struggled to get into the room, but to no avail.

Ace laughed, out of madness, out of rebellion, out of some delusional satisfaction.

Her laughter was cut off short. Ka-El had opened his eyes and in less time than it takes to blink, he'd gone across the room and grabbed Ace by the throat.

She choked and gasped for breath. In fact, Kal-El was holding back so much he felt like she would slip through his fingers. He did not understand that he was crushing her throat.

"Make it stop," he ordered, too angry to let go or even loosen his grip. Ace shook as she saw his blue eyes turn an intense red.

Corpses' hands burst from the walls as the rain turned into hail and Ace struggled to breath. The ground shook beneath them, but Kal-El was unaffected. He continued telling his 'classmate' to make the visions stop. He could feel them altering his mind.

"Kal," she choked out. "Kal, I can't breath."

"You're not supposed to call me that!" he screamed.

The entire room burst into flames and kryptonite spears impaled Kal-El's torso, blood pouring from the wound, and the ground collapsed and his parents were calling for him to come home and he had killed Ace. He had killed everyone; everyone was dead and he was happy; they were humans, they deserved to die, they'd taken him and broken him. Now they were dead like him.

But they were not. Ace was being carried from the room, sedated but very much alive. Hamilton had rushed over to Kal-El, who was still standing there, perfectly still.

"Are you all right? Project Kal-El, Sector 313, respond!"

"Is he all right?" repeated a nearby worker, John Peters as it so happened. "Are you kidding? He almost snapped that girl's neck and you're asking if _he_'s all right?"

"Ace should never have been put in the same sector as Kal-El," Hamilton said. Several workers nodded in agreement. The girl was obviously psychotic. He turned back to Kal-El. "This is not your fault. She was completely disturbed. You acted on impulse."

He started to leave, when Kal-El spoke up, in the original hollow voice.

"What will happen to Ace?"

"She will have to be terminated," Hamilton said softly, without looking back.

Later that night Kal-El would experience nightmares for the first time.

**Author's Note:** So this chapter and the next few are just to give you a sense of how Kal's growing up. Um, sorry for making Ace evil and crazy…and anyone who doesn't know that Ace is an illusionist is probably very confused. Hope you enjoy this. Please review! :) (For the record, I didn't know Firestorm was actually a superhero until a few days ago after I'd already written the first two chapters of this story. So, I didn't copy the name on purpose, but I'm not changing it.)


End file.
